The Most Interesting Quotes from Winona Ryder’s GQ Profile

Yesterday the internet went crazy when a new GQ interview with Winona Ryder went up online. In it, the actress claims to have known that Mel Gibson was a crazy anti-Semitic more than 15 years before the rest of us did. She also struggles to work her iPhone, refers to “TMZ” as “TZM”, and says that she has no idea who Justin Bieber is. We were also delighted to find out that she thought that Tim Burton was a prop guy at her Beetlejuice audition and that Timothy Leary (yes, that one) is her godfather. The full story on Gibson, and more interesting quotes from Ryder — who we’d like to note the writer describes as “too old to coquette and too young to cougar” — after the jump.

The Mel Gibson quote that everyone’s talking about: “I remember, like, fifteen years ago, I was at one of those big Hollywood parties. And he was really drunk. I was with my friend, who’s gay. He made a really horrible gay joke. And somehow it came up that I was Jewish. He said something about ‘oven dodgers,’ but I didn’t get it. I’d never heard that before. It was just this weird, weird moment. I was like, ‘He’s anti-Semitic and he’s homophobic.’ No one believed me!”

On identifying with her character in Black Swan: “I thought it was a cool parallel. Being replaced by the young thing. I know that definitely happens in Hollywood. It’s harder to find good roles, and suddenly there’s new girls. I’m at that age I’ve been warned my whole life about.”

How her strange childhood made it hard to be a “rebel”: “I went through this stage where I was really square. We lived on this commune, and there was this beautiful waterfall. And there’d be a lot of kids that were naked. But I was in a bathing suit.”

When the subject of painkillers comes up: “Yeah, those things. I think they’re more powerful than people think. People think, ‘Oh, heroin’s the hardest,’ but pills can be…”

Her explanation for avoiding the topic of shoplifting: “It’s just like, nothing… I don’t, like, even… I mean, I know people still… I apologize, ’cause I understand the curiosity. I just don’t really want to go there.”

On whether digging into her dark side as an actress led to her early-twenties breakdown: “I think, yeah, there’s a lot of danger in that. And I think that made me freak out a little bit. I think I was playing with fire there, for a while.”